Speaker 1: Marino's assault on the police force was probably the most
Speaker 1: savage since the Kelli gang shot three police dead at
Speaker 1: Stringing Buck Creek in eighteen seventy eight. People don't usually
Speaker 1: come out of nowhere to offend, but when they do,
Speaker 1: it's very tricky for police because they can't run through
Speaker 1: lists of known offenders and find the right guy. Then
Speaker 1: a split second, he twisted and fired twice with a hangar.
Speaker 1: I'm Andrew Rule. This is life and crimes. If you
Speaker 1: hang around long enough in this business, and sadly I have,
Speaker 1: you keep seeing the anniversaries crop up, and you see
Speaker 1: names come up and think, oh my god, is it
Speaker 1: really that long since that happened. It seems much closer
Speaker 1: than that, because some things stick in your mind, and
Speaker 1: one of them is the shooting of the guy they
Speaker 1: called Mad Max. This is the real Mad Max. This
Speaker 1: is not made up by a scriptwriter. This was the
Speaker 1: guy who shot several police and went on the run
Speaker 1: and was apprehended eighteen months later by two brave and
Speaker 1: perhaps slightly reckless detectives. And that's a story I'm going
Speaker 1: to go through. Now. We must point out that way
Speaker 1: back in twenty sixteen, we took a quick look at
Speaker 1: the story of Mad Max, but today we take a
Speaker 1: look at the shootout in much greater detail. It was
Speaker 1: forty years ago last month that a lone gunman shot
Speaker 1: two policemen during a routine car check, and then he
Speaker 1: shot two more during the manhunt that followed. All four
Speaker 1: of those police were seriously wounded, and one of them
Speaker 1: was left paraplegic. A fifth policeman was hit in that
Speaker 1: same night. This was a dog handler, one of the
Speaker 1: canine unit, and interestingly, unlike the others, he was wearing
Speaker 1: his holistic vest, and because he was wearing his bailistic vest,
Speaker 1: the bullet basically shocked him and stunned him and probably
Speaker 1: made him fall over, but it didn't hurt him. He
Speaker 1: walked away. He got home that night unwounded, as did
Speaker 1: his dog, because he was wearing his bailistic vest and
Speaker 1: the others were not, I think, and there's probably a
Speaker 1: lesson there. The shooter his real name was Pavel Maronoff,
Speaker 1: alias Max Clark, the name he used when he got
Speaker 1: to this country. Interestingly, that he did get to this
Speaker 1: country because he was a former Bulgarian Army deserter, so
Speaker 1: he was hardly you'd think precisely the right sort of
Speaker 1: profile as a migrant back in the seventies or whenever
Speaker 1: he got here. He was dubbed mad Max by us
Speaker 1: in the media for the eight months that he stayed
Speaker 1: on the loose, because for the rest of nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: after he shot four policemen and shot out a fifth one,
Speaker 1: he became Australia's most wanted man, taking over from the
Speaker 1: master prison escaper Russell mad Dog Cox, who'd been on
Speaker 1: the run since nineteen seventy seven. You'll see a certain
Speaker 1: sameness in the names here. We've got Mad Max taking
Speaker 1: over from mad Dog Cox. Neither of them were mad
Speaker 1: and they got those names from crime reporters who should
Speaker 1: know better. And in fact, in both cases their real
Speaker 1: names were quite different from the names that they were
Speaker 1: known as in the newspapers. But there you go, Finny
Speaker 1: ol World. Marino's assault on the police force was probably
Speaker 1: the most savage since the Kelli gang shot three police
Speaker 1: dead at Stringing Buck Creek in eighteen seventy eight, so
Speaker 1: that was one hundred and seven years earlier, probably the
Speaker 1: worst thing to happen to the Victorian police in that
Speaker 1: intervening century. Because he was a previously unknown offender with
Speaker 1: no close associates or criminal history. Police could not lean
Speaker 1: on the underworld for information. Now, how often does this happen?
Speaker 1: Something bad happens and it's somebody who has no criminal history.
Speaker 1: That's a rare thing. For a start. People don't usually
Speaker 1: come out of nowhere to offend. But when they do,
Speaker 1: it's very tricky for police because they can't run through
Speaker 1: lists of known offenders and find the right guy, because
Speaker 1: the right guy in these rare cases isn't on those lists,
Speaker 1: because he's got no criminal history, no known form, and
Speaker 1: so they don't know who they're looking for. Whereas, to
Speaker 1: be honest, in most cases they've got a rough idea
Speaker 1: exactly who they're looking for. Police command turned to one
Speaker 1: of its own born, detective Sergeant John Kapetanovsky, a tough
Speaker 1: major crime Squad veteran who could speak two Slavic languages
Speaker 1: and had contacts in the Yugoslav community. Kappa, as everyone
Speaker 1: called him, I remember this, We all call him Kappa,
Speaker 1: was known for his imposing physical presence. Big tall guy,
Speaker 1: long lane or long nose. If he decided not to smile,
Speaker 1: he could look quite unfriendly. He was a big tough man,
Speaker 1: and he was known for his habit of carrying a
Speaker 1: spare snubnosed pistol in an ankle holster. Now I don't
Speaker 1: know if that was strictly kosher, but back in those days,
Speaker 1: detectives in the tough squads, like the Robbery Squad and
Speaker 1: the Major Crime Squad, they tended to want to be
Speaker 1: well armed because they were dealing with some very violent
Speaker 1: people who were well armed. Kappa was no boy scout,
Speaker 1: but he believed in being prepared, and he was exactly
Speaker 1: the type needed to flush out mad Max Maronov before
Speaker 1: he murdered someone before he basically shot in another four people,
Speaker 1: notably the police. In early February nineteen eighty six, Kappa
Speaker 1: got a tip from a Yugoslav source that the wanted
Speaker 1: man was hiding with a young family in semi suburban
Speaker 1: Wollen just north of Craigieburn now Wollan. Back in those days,
Speaker 1: and I know this because I lived up that way
Speaker 1: was still sort of a country town, but it was
Speaker 1: a highway town. It was on the Northern Highway that
Speaker 1: led off the freeway up to Kilmore and then further
Speaker 1: on you know, it was the back way to Bendigo
Speaker 1: and to places like Elmore and Rochester and all that.
Speaker 1: As such, Wollen then was changing, and it did have
Speaker 1: a lot of people who'd moved there from the northern suburbs,
Speaker 1: and among them was obviously the family who acted as
Speaker 1: the host. Saw offered safe harbor for mad Max Maronov,
Speaker 1: undoubtedly because they were of the same ethnic group and
Speaker 1: he could speak to them and so on. Now, Detective
Speaker 1: Sergeant the one we call Kappa, was paired with another
Speaker 1: senior detective, the quietly spoken Rod McDonald, who I remember
Speaker 1: well from that era. On the morning of February twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: now this is nineteen eighty six, This is eight months
Speaker 1: after the shootings in Noble Park, a man roughly resembling
Speaker 1: Maroanov left the Wolln House driving two children to school
Speaker 1: in a white Ford panel van. The detectives suspective was Maranov,
Speaker 1: but could not be sure as photographs of him were
Speaker 1: scarce and poor quality. The frightening thing about Maroanov was that,
Speaker 1: unlike most offenders, he was a pistol expert who had
Speaker 1: honed his skills well above the level of most normal police.
Speaker 1: Ordinary police who learned to shoot when they do their training,
Speaker 1: and then now and again they have a refresher course
Speaker 1: the pistol range and so on. But most of them
Speaker 1: are just moderately proficient. But this fellow was a crank
Speaker 1: and he had clearly built himself a pistol range, I think,
Speaker 1: under his house down in the southeastern suburbs, and become
Speaker 1: very very proficient at shooting quickly and accurately. He could
Speaker 1: shoot under pressure, which is what most of us can't do.
Speaker 1: If the man in the panel van was Maronov, it
Speaker 1: was vital they apprehend him away from members of the public.
Speaker 1: So when the vehicle, when the panel Van turns south
Speaker 1: from Wollen on the hum Highway towards Melbourne, the detectives
Speaker 1: faced making a snap decision. Would they stop him before
Speaker 1: he reached the suburbs, which were only you know, fifteen
Speaker 1: to twenty minutes away really, or would they let him
Speaker 1: go down into suburbia and try and pick him up
Speaker 1: down there. Now they did have reason logic on their side.
Speaker 1: They thought if they could get him out on the highway,
Speaker 1: away from other people, away from densely populated streets and
Speaker 1: all that, and no passers by and no pedestrians, that
Speaker 1: it would be safer for the public, and so bravely
Speaker 1: in my view, they pulled the van over on the
Speaker 1: highway near Beveridge, which, as many people will know, is
Speaker 1: coincidentally only a few hundred meters from the little old
Speaker 1: tumble down house where near Kelly was born back in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty five. The driver's hair the driver of the
Speaker 1: panel van, his hair seemed longer and a lighter color
Speaker 1: than Maronoff's. The pictures they had of maranof and he
Speaker 1: had a beard, so they couldn't be certain it was him,
Speaker 1: so they kept their guns down. Now, both these detectives
Speaker 1: were armed, as they used to be in those days,
Speaker 1: with pump action shotguns. Pump action twelve GUARDE shotguns a
Speaker 1: fearsome piece of equipment at clost range. And I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if they did this with the blessing of their
Speaker 1: superiors or the department or not, but they very wisely
Speaker 1: loaded their shotguns with what they call sgs. Now. Sg's
Speaker 1: are the very heavy shot. Some people might call it
Speaker 1: buck shot, and it is. The slugs in sg's are
Speaker 1: about as big as a twenty two bullet slug. They're
Speaker 1: quite big enough to do some damage, and they put
Speaker 1: nine of them in each cartridge, So that is a
Speaker 1: very heavy shot load, and it's designed to take down
Speaker 1: big game. It'll take down a wild pig or that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. At the right range, it would certainly
Speaker 1: take down most people. And beauty of it does is
Speaker 1: that even though there are only nine slugs in each cartridge,
Speaker 1: those nine would spread sufficiently that some of them would
Speaker 1: hit the target, which is a very useful thing. Under
Speaker 1: the sort of pressure that these guys were under, ordered
Speaker 1: the driver to place his hands outside the door so
Speaker 1: they could see them. The driver seemed calm and compliant,
Speaker 1: but in a split second, I think what he did.
Speaker 1: I think he had a pistol underneath a street directory
Speaker 1: or underneath a newspaper or something. I think he added hidden.
Speaker 1: But in a split second he twisted and fired twice
Speaker 1: with a handgun. Now he's shooting through the window of
Speaker 1: his car, the open window of his car or windows plural.
Speaker 1: He hits Cappa in the shoulder and the hand two shots, bang,
Speaker 1: bang hits him twice before pivoting the other way and
Speaker 1: shooting McDonald in the chest. So McDonald must have moved
Speaker 1: up to the passenger side window with his pump action
Speaker 1: shotgun and Matt Max was like wired op on angel dust.
Speaker 1: It was an astonishing bit of shooting. He shoots one
Speaker 1: policeman twice, and he pivots and shoots the other policeman
Speaker 1: in the chest. Any of those shots could have ky
Speaker 1: those policemen. They were in fact quite seriously wounded, but
Speaker 1: it didn't kill them. Maranov was shooting to kill, but
Speaker 1: they say that Kappa's reflex, his reaction of throwing his
Speaker 1: hand up after he was hitting his shoulder probably saved him.
Speaker 1: The second bullet took the top off one finger, but
Speaker 1: it deflected the bullet so that it only grazed his
Speaker 1: forehead near his eyebrow. Then the third shot, of course,
Speaker 1: hit McDonald in the chest and wounded him quite badly.
Speaker 1: Devastatingly accurate shooting, and Maranov would have got away again
Speaker 1: if it weren't for the heavy SG buckshot that they'd
Speaker 1: selected for their shotguns. As the van sped away, McDonald
Speaker 1: fired twice at a bang bang with the pump action.
Speaker 1: The heavy slugs, nine in each cartridge, blasted through the
Speaker 1: side and rear panels and hit Clark's stomach and arm.
Speaker 1: The van ran off the rail. Some hundreds of meters away.
Speaker 1: It went through six wire fences and stopped in a
Speaker 1: thistly paddock about one hundred and fifty meters from the
Speaker 1: highway and about a kilometer from the crime scene. So
Speaker 1: this car has gone down the road quite away with
Speaker 1: essentially a dying man at the wheel. Then he's become disoriented,
Speaker 1: he's losing blood, he's dying. He runs off the road,
Speaker 1: luckily to the left rather than across the oncoming traffic,
Speaker 1: and he goes through a fence, and he goes through
Speaker 1: six more fences before the van rolls to a stop. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: behind him, back on the highway, the Hume Highway, the
Speaker 1: wounded pair of police desperately needed help. They flagged down
Speaker 1: a passing driver to ask him to stop a truck
Speaker 1: with a CB radio to call an ambulance. Now why
Speaker 1: they had to do that, I'm not sure, but anyway,
Speaker 1: we've got to remember this was before mobile phones. But
Speaker 1: you would have thought they had a police radio that
Speaker 1: would have done the trick. I don't understand what went
Speaker 1: wrong there. Maybe they weren't thinking straight, don't know, but
Speaker 1: they needed medical help faster than waiting for an ambulance,
Speaker 1: so they staggered to their Commodore. They had the plane commodore,
Speaker 1: just a brown Commodol and Kappa drove it with one
Speaker 1: hand towards Melbourne because he had I think a finger
Speaker 1: knocked off and his shoulders out of action with a bullet.
Speaker 1: He drives towards Melbourne. So he's going past Donnybrook towards Craigieburn,
Speaker 1: and then he decides he can't go any further. They
Speaker 1: stopped at a house at Craigieburn North. Now in those days,
Speaker 1: nowadays a lot of that is suburbia and or small
Speaker 1: blocks and all factories and all sorts of things, But
Speaker 1: in those days it was still farmland. They stopped at
Speaker 1: the house at Craigburn North and asked to use the phone.
Speaker 1: Both of them were bleeding badly by this time. As
Speaker 1: Kappa ended his call to police headquarters, he slumped to
Speaker 1: the floor, much to the alarm of the nice old
Speaker 1: lady that owned the house. Rod McDonald was already slumped
Speaker 1: in the passenger seat of their car, bleeding profusely. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: a police helicopter circled the panel van back up the road.
Speaker 1: Circled the panel van looking for signs of life. It
Speaker 1: looked as if a man were crouched in the driver's seat,
Speaker 1: so the Special Operations Group was brought in to rush
Speaker 1: the car. They needed to be sure that he was dead,
Speaker 1: what if he was playing possum. It turned out that
Speaker 1: he wasn't playing possum. He had died. He had died
Speaker 1: from those shots that Rod McDonald had let loose. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until they removed a wig that they were sure
Speaker 1: as Maranoff alias Max Clark wasn't ntil. Then they realized
Speaker 1: they were certain they had the right guy because Maranoff
Speaker 1: was actually short, he was balding. He looked like George
Speaker 1: Costanzo in Seinfeld, and he was bolding, and he had short,
Speaker 1: dark hair, and so the long blonde wig and the
Speaker 1: beard was a throwoff. The two injured officers were flown
Speaker 1: by helicopter to Faulkner Park and transferred to hospital, where
Speaker 1: they both had life saving surgery. Assistant Commissioner Kel Glare,
Speaker 1: who's still with us today as a retired long retired
Speaker 1: police officer. Later he was the Chief Commissioner. Calvin Glair
Speaker 1: said the pair Kappa and MacDonald had taken a courageous
Speaker 1: decision to intercept the offender, and they did it for
Speaker 1: the right reasons. This person was heading towards a populated area.
Speaker 1: Blaire said they saw an opportunity to intercept him before
Speaker 1: he got into a crowded situation where even surveillance would
Speaker 1: have been difficult and fraught with danger for others. They
Speaker 1: acted with great courage, But these heroes, as they were,
Speaker 1: had to cope with the psychic and physical effects of
Speaker 1: theirs wounds for the rest of their lives, as did
Speaker 1: the four other police injured by Maronov. There's little doubt
Speaker 1: that being shot and the stress of the whole situation
Speaker 1: shortened Kappa's life. He died at sixty years old in
Speaker 1: twenty twelve. Rod McDonald's still with us to this day.
Speaker 1: He's a quiet, unassuming man and to meet him or
Speaker 1: talk to him, you would never imagine that he was
Speaker 1: the man who emerged victorious at the OK Corral. Was
Speaker 1: him with the buckshot that beat mad Max. Part script
Speaker 1: of the story is that Kappa actually became divorced at
Speaker 1: some stage, and he remarried a policewoman and they had
Speaker 1: one daughter, whose name is Alexandra. Alexandra has joined the
Speaker 1: police force in honor of her father. She was only
Speaker 1: nineteen when her father died. Now, of course, she's now
Speaker 1: in her thirties and she's going very well in the
Speaker 1: police force. She recently told our reporters that she owes
Speaker 1: a great debt to Police Legacy, the organization which helped
Speaker 1: her and so many others get over the effects of
Speaker 1: the injuries and sometimes the deaths that are suffered by
Speaker 1: our policemen and women in a line of duty. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun
Speaker 1: production for true crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton.
Speaker 1: For my columns, features and more, go to Heraldsun dot
Speaker 1: com dot au, forward slash Andrew rule one word. For
Speaker 1: advertising inquiries, go to news Podcasts sold at News dot
Speaker 1: com dot au. That is all one word news podcasts
Speaker 1: sold And if you want further information about this episode,
Speaker 1: links are in the description.